It’s official. I’m now convinced that the average Canadian is in more danger from judges and lawyers than they are from criminals. Consider the case of four residents of British Columbia: Bahadur Singh Bhalru, Sukhvir Singh Khosa, Dan Geller and Linda Loo. Two of the four were street racers whose cars exceeded 120 km/h in a 50 km/h that night in November 2000 when one of them lost control and killed a pedestrian. Last October Bhalru and Khosa were found guilty of criminal negligence causing death and this week they were to be sentenced by Judge Loo.
What do you suppose the penalty was for ending the life of Irene Thorpe? The law allows for a sentence of life imprisonment and attorneys representing the people of British Columbia asked for a sentence of 4 to 7 years for the killers. Despite the fact that an epidemic of street racing has wiped out 20 lives in the lower mainland of BC in the past few years including an RCMP officer Judge Loo decided that any jail time was too harsh a sentence for these men whose age, clean record and hard work impressed the distinguished jurist. Instead they were grounded for 2 years, though they could of course leave their homes to go to work or to school. Loo claimed that she sympathized with the victim’s children and siblings who were naturally upset by having their mother and sister killed but, she told them, the harm caused by law-breakers was but one of many factors in determining what the judge called a “just sentence”.
The sentence provoked anger in many. Where was the fairness, they asked, in such a paltry penalty for the most serious of results, the ending of a human life? Enter Mr Geller, lawyer for the young hard workers on whom Judge Loo had smiled. This sterling representative of the legal profession brushed away such criticism. The sentences, he said with a straight face, were onerous. "Anybody here who had to be home except for work … would consider that a form of imprisonment." Ms Thorpe, sadly, was not there to dispute this contemptible remark, having earlier been killed by his clients.
Street racers are a menace to society but the real damage to the social fabric is done, not by criminals, but by members of the legal profession who repeatedly bring the very notion of justice into question. Thoughtful citizens have every right to be angry over such decisions and statements. They know that the primary duty of the state is to protect the lives of the innocent. If you don’t want vigilante justice; if you really care about reducing the number of lives lost to bad drivers; if you don’t want to enflame racist sentiment (most of the more shocking cases of death by street racers have involved Asian youth); if you don’t want to bring the judicial system into disrepute then, please, just enforce the damn laws.
Posted by at February 5, 2003 11:18 PM